Office of Patient Advocate.

Existing law establishes the Office of Patient Advocate within the California Health and Human Services Agency to provide assistance to, and advocate on behalf of, health care consumers by, among other things, coordinating amongst, providing assistance to, and collecting data from, all of the state agency consumer assistance or patient assistance programs and call centers, to better enable health care consumers to access the health care services to which they are eligible. Existing law requires public health coverage programs to provide the office with call center data, and requires the office to prepare an annual report on the quality of help centers, call centers, and other health care consumer or patient assistance services operated by those programs. Under existing law, "health coverage program" for purposes of those provisions includes the Medi-Cal program, the California Health Benefit Exchange, county health coverage programs, the Healthy Families Program, the Basic Health Program, if enacted, and the Access for Infants and Mothers Program. This bill would remove references to the Healthy Families Program, the Basic Health Program, and the Access for Infants and Mothers Program from the list of "health coverage programs" described above.